Rogers Carrying On Syndie Tradition

From Daily Variety, Vol. 221, No. 44 — 11/3/1988

Steve Rogers, son of the late namesake of the Peter Rogers Organization, has purchased
the syndication outfit from his father’s estate for an undisclosed sum — including
a library of more than 250 films — and plans to acquire and distribute additional
product.

Peter Rogers, who died earlier this year, was considered a pioneer in tv syndication,
and his son had been working with him the last several years.

Foremost among Rogers’ marketing plans is an approach that allows stations to assemble
their own film packages from Rogers' vaults to afford stations flexibility in creating
theme weeks. “We have every sort of title imaginable,” Rogers stated.

The company is also adding new vintage series to its roster, which already includes
“I Spy” and the four-part miniseries version of “War And Peace.”

Peter Rogers Organization had been in a limbo since the elder Rogers’ death, with only
the accounts receivable department operating. Steve Rogers said he eventually hopes
to expand distribution to include cable and home video.

Son Takes Over Where Dad Left Off

By William MahoneyLos Angeles Bureau ChiefOctober 19, 1992

LOS ANGELES — Imagine being 25 years old and taking over your father’s business
after his death, without any experience in the field and few organized records to
follow.

Add to that a business climate that’s taken a particularly unfavorable turn
for small companies.

That’s exactly what Stephen Rodgers, chief executive officer of independent
distributor The Peter Rodgers Organization did four years ago.

His father, industry veteran Peter Rodgers, had been in the TV business since 1950,
and had run his own company since 1976.

After he died in February 1988, a legal fight among family members ensued over
the fate of the company, with some pushing to liquidate it.

But Stephen Rodgers won out and took over the business.

He soon found himself wading through paperwork left by his father, most of which
wasn’t very useful, Mr. Rodgers said.

“My dad kept a lot of it in his head,” he said.

Mr. Rodgers’ only involvement in TV up to that point was helping his dad at
National Association of Television Program Executives conventions.

He had been making his living engineering heating and air conditioning systems
for high-rise buildings.

“I came in with no knowledge of sales, whatsoever,” he says.

Mr. Rodgers sifted through files and letters, trying to learn the business and
the state of the company.

Eventually he sorted the papers out enough to get the distribution company
active again.

“My father taught me this business,” he says now, “but
he wasn’t alive when he taught me.”

After spending a few years mining the library product and supervising other
ongoing sales activities, Mr. Rodgers went to last year’s NATPE with a new
first-run series called “Only In Hollywood,” the company’s first
all-barter new series.

He picked up rights to the show, 26 weekly half-hours looking at the untold
stories in Hollywood, just before NATPE began, and he came out of the convention
with five clearances.

Yet, over the next eight months, he managed to get the show cleared in 117
markets covering 73 percent of the country for launch this fall.

The Peter Rodgers company is planning to roll out a barter movie package from
features in the company’s library, which includes such series as
“I Spy” and “The Shari Lewis Show.”

Mr. Rodgers is also considering some development opportunities for future weekly
first-run series.

At NATPE next year, the company will double its usual amount of exhibition
space at the convention, from 400 square feet to 800.

KNBC SHUFFLES WEEKEND SKED

KNBC-TV will add seven new programs to its fall weekend program sked, including five
syndie entries, one NBC O&O-produced show and one local news broadcast.

The station opted to leave its weekday sked intact, with Paramount’s “Entertainment
Tonight” and “Hard Copy” remaining in the 7-8 access block. Warner Bros. “The
Jenny Jones Show” remains at 2p.m., followed by Multimedia’s “Donahue” at 3.

In a year, KNBC will pick up two other Multimedia shows, “Sally Jessy Raphael” and
“Jerry Springer,” with “Donahue” and “Sally,” the station will have the No. 2 and
No. 3 rated talkshows to match up against KABC-TV’s “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

For the upcoming season, KNBC is concentrating on weekends. It has acquired MTM’s
“The New WKRP in Cincinnati,” which appeared on indie KCAL-TV last season. The
show will air the sitcoms at 7p.m. Saturdays starting Sept. 12.

As previously reported (Daily Variety, July 29), KNBC has scheduled new Saturday
and Sunday a.m. news broadcasts beginning Sept. 5-6 to follow the new weekend
editions of “Today.” The local programs will air from 8-9:30 a.m., with anchors
to be announced.

The Brotherhood

In writing of their own careers, TV’s pioneers provide a history of the
medium’s early days in new book Fridays With ArtBy Staff — Broadcasting & Cable, 9/14/2003 8:00:00 PM

Television is now firmly in the hands of its second generation of executives.
But what of that first generation, the WW II vets and radio guys who made the jump
to TV and invented the medium as they went along over the next 50 years? Some have
died, but many are retired or winding down their careers as consultants and such.

About 30 years ago, Dick Woollen, then buyer for Metromedia Television, and the late
Art Greenfield, then the head of his own program-distribution company, began having
lunch every Friday in Los Angeles, their busy schedules permitting. Just friends,
comparing notes, trading gossip and sharing their triumphs and defeats.

Over the years, the number of plates around their lunch table grew as other
Hollywood program buyers and sellers joined the discussion. Some Fridays, four would
show; other weeks, there would be as many as 10.

Finally, someone in this loose fraternity (yes, it's all men) suggested that they
write a book about their adventures in TV. Each member—25 in all—would tell his own
story as a chapter. With permission, here are four anecdotes from Fridays With Art,
edited by Woollen and to be published in October by Burbank, Calif. -- based Parrot
Communications International (Hardcover/408 pages/$27.95):

In the early 1950s, Jim Stern was peddling shows for New York-based Guild Films.

Here's what the man said to me in his rich southern drawl: "This guy [a vulgarity for
defecates] cream puffs!"

The drawler was the General Sales Manager at one of Norfolk, Va.'s two TV stations
to which I had been trying to sell a new show starring the talented but extravagantly
flamboyant piano player, Liberace. The way he lisped slightly as he cooed the lyrics
of love songs did nothing to dispel the image of homosexuality, nor did his penchant
for glittery jackets with lacy cuffs and candelabra poised prettily on his piano.
Liberace's show first aired on a local Los Angeles station in 1952, and by 1954 had
exploded onto TV stations in 217 cities. But it wasn't easy getting him there.

It took a lot of hard selling to convince any of my customers, either businessmen,
advertisers or TV Station Managers in the Southeastern part of the nation, that this
odd entertainer who today in our era of political correctness would be referred to as
a "gay" entertainer but was then more bluntly referred to as a "fag," could attract
viewers week after week. They said "No" to me in Norfolk and Richmond and Roanoke,
and in Greenville and Charleston.

After dozens of futile audition screenings, I had discovered that the louder I
turned up the sound volume, the better the schmaltzy piano music sounded ... and also
the more it attracted the avid attention of any women who were within earshot. So
before screening for a major appliance dealer in Columbia, [S.C.] I corralled as
many secretaries as I could to join us in the company's conference room, turned the
volume up full, and let it roll. When the film ended, the appliance guy seemed
uncertain and unhappy. I asked him what percentage of his customers were women. He
said, "About 90%." I then asked one of the girls how she liked the show, and with a
tone bordering on reverence, she said, "Ah cain't find words to say!" So I made
my first sale.

In the mid 1970s, Ave Butensky was an ad buyer at Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample, working
on the Toyota account.

The head of NBC Spot Sales, Bud Hirsch, came to my office and said, "Ave, how would
you like to buy the overtime break in the Super Bowl?" He added that such a spot
would no doubt be the highest-rated part of the game, probably the highest-rated
spot for the entire year. It sounded like an offer that couldn't be refused. Now,
as every football fan knows, there has never been an overtime in Super Bowl history.
Bud explained the cost would be $25,000 for one 30-second spot, and that only one
such spot would be aired. Bud also went on to explain that in the event there was no
overtime break, WNBC-TV would still keep the $25,000 but would offer a package of
make-goods to run over the next few weeks as part of a bushel basket of other spots.
But he showed that the overall value of those make-good spots would exceed the value
of the one overtime spot in the Super Bowl. I heard enough. We agreed. That night
while going home on the Long Island Railroad, I met another time buyer who worked for
another advertising agency who told me that he had bought the one overtime spot in
the Super Bowl. I had the feeling that something else was in play here. How was it
possible that Bud had sold the same single spot to two people?

And then it came to me. I called Bud at home and asked one simple question. "Bud,
to how many advertisers did you sell that one overtime break in the Super Bowl?"
Bud answered, "25." This was Zero Mostel and The Producers all over again, but this
time it was television.

Bud was betting there would be no overtime. And he was right. Every one of those 25
advertisers paid for a bushel basket of other spots, all sucked in by the notion that
each might have that special overtime break in the big game. During his retirement
party, I gave Bud the "chutzpah" award.

Dick Woollen was running KTTV(TV) Los Angeles in 1962. On the night that Richard Nixon
lost his gubernatorial bid, late-night talk-show host and Nixon supporter Tom Duggan
left word that he would not be doing his show.

I was slumped exhaustedly in my den about 8 p.m. when Ann Duggan, Tom's wife,
called me with her startling question: Would I like to have Nixon fill in for Tom
that night? Airtime was 11 p.m. I mumbled something inconclusive and she said,
"Well, Dick Nixon is right here. I'll put him on."

I was dumbfounded. In his (at the time) darkest hour, Nixon hadn't gone home to his
loyal wife, Pat. He hadn't even stayed with any of his closest confidants such as
Bob Haldeman or Herb Klein. Instead, he had somehow wended his way to Duggan's home,
where he found Ann home alone.

When Nixon came on the phone, it was obvious he was drunk. I was scrambling for
reasons to tell him why I didn't think it would be a good idea for him to do a live
one-hour telecast "after such an exhausting day," and one of his slurred responses was
so memorable that it has become a staple of our family repartee ever since. I could
almost envision him drawing himself erect as he chided my resistance by saying to
me, "Well, I'm not eshackly wifout intelligence, ya know!"

I finally told him I'd think about it and get back to him. As soon as I hung up I
called KTTV and spoke to the guard at the security gate, giving him firm orders that
if Nixon showed up, not to admit him on the lot. Then, knowing that my colleague,
Rev Winckler, was a close friend of Nixon's Communications Director, Herb Klein, I
called Rev with the urgent suggestion that he find Herb or somebody else close to Nixon
and send them out to put a butterfly net over him. Rev reached Herb with the news.
Herb tracked down Haldeman who then dashed over to Duggan's house and carted Nixon
back to where he belonged. I've often mused over the incident. Call it the "what if"
syndrome. What if I had let Nixon do Duggan's show that night? What if a drunken
Richard Nixon had babbled on for an hour on live TV? Would he ever have later been
elected President of the United States? Or would the press reports have been so
devastating that it would have finished him politically?

Sandy Frank owned his own production and distribution company. In 1977, he was
determined to make a movie about then Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin. In that
effort, he visited Begin and was literally at his side when he announced that
President Sadat of Egypt would address the Knesset, a breakthrough in relations
between the two countries.

A day after that announcement I was walking down the corridor with... Begin, and the
subject of Barbara Walters came up. I asked him if he would be interested in an
interview with her. He said, "Absolutely. I would be delighted." Based on that
information, I called ABC News in New York and got Barbara Walters on the phone
with a cold call. I had never met her. I told her I had just been with Prime Minister
Begin and he indicated he would be willing to meet with her and be interviewed by
her in Israel when President Sadat came, which would be several days later. Her
reaction to this news was like that of a child, jumping up and down. She let out a
loud whoop, yelling, "Begin wants me to interview him with Sadat!" I told her that
the one thing I ask in return for getting her this interview was to bring me a copy
of Weekly Variety, BROADCASTING , and a bottle of Eau de Portugal hair tonic. Over
the years, whenever I have seen Barbara Walters she kids me about having schlepped
this stuff all the way to Israel.